However, that will change later this spring, when Angela Ahrendts will join as senior vice president and head of retail. Ahrendts is currently the CEO of Burberry.

“There is a general problem with diversity at the highest echelon of Apple,” said Jonas Kron, director of shareholder advocacy at Boston-based Trillium, in an interview with Bloomberg. “It’s all white men.”

Trillium, along with the Sustainability Group, have both raised the issue with Cupertino and said they would bring it to a vote at the February 28 meeting.

Still, this is a problem far beyond just Apple. According to a recent report by Catalyst, a nonprofit research group, just 17 percent of Fortune 500 board members were women, and only 15 percent hold the CEO spot.

According to Bloomberg, Apple is now adding the following language to the charter: “The nominating committee is committed to actively seeking out highly qualified women and individuals from minority groups to include in the pool from which board nominees are chosen.”

Official language is nice, but it will only satisfy the company's critics if followed up by action. Currently, Apple has only one woman serving on its board of directors, Andrea Jung, the former CEO of Avon.

Why does it matter? If the company is succeeding at who is at the helm why change it for no reason? Just because you want to appease minorities or gender lines? I thought the point of this was to make money for shareholders.

I think it's really a question of putting the best people they can find in place, regardless of background. Judging from Apple's performance over the past 5 years, I'd say they have done that. I really despise folks that push for diversity for diversity sake. Hire the best you are willing to pay for and don't worry about sex or race.

Next you'll tell me that the pay of CEOs who are women is worse than that of their male counterparts. I don't think I could stand that one.

I know! Who would've thought that a company whose products are marketed almost exclusively towards people who have more money than they know what to do with would have an executive team made up entirely of rich white males?

Edit: Wow, that was not received well. The point I was trying to make is that of course the executive team is all white because, even though it's messed up, the greatest concentration of wealth is with white males. Apple sells products whose prices are far more than I think should be reasonably charged with a release schedule that's a poster child for planned obsolescence. I don't know if all these downvotes are because I came off as insulting to minorities or because people here really love Apple, but I just figured I'd clarify.

They should add only the best qualified candidates when finding new ones, regardless of sex or race. It seems that whatever Apple's process has been, it's fairly profitable and successful for the past 6+ years, they shouldn't go changing that just for the sake of change.

Why does it matter? If the company is succeeding at who is at the helm why change it for no reason? Just because you want to appease minorities or gender lines? I thought the point of this was to make money for shareholders.

In principle you want some diversity in your execs. If everyone has basically the same background, it's easy to get a bunch of yes-men who don't even know what they don't know.

It's not something that the existing execs need to get fired over. So, if no openings appear, then there will be no change. But if openings do appear, it's something to think about.

Why does it matter? If the company is succeeding at who is at the helm why change it for no reason? Just because you want to appease minorities or gender lines? I thought the point of this was to make money for shareholders.

In principle you want some diversity in your execs. If everyone has basically the same background, it's easy to get a bunch of yes-men who don't even know what they don't know.

It's not something that the existing execs need to get fired over. So, if no openings appear, then there will be no change. But if openings do appear, it's something to think about.

Just because you have a different skin color or set of genitalia, doesn't mean you have a different background or that you won't become a yes-man. Getting diversity for the sake of diversity doesn't help anyone if you(because) let race and genitalia come before skills and merit. Neither does the same color and genitalia imply that you'll become a yes-man, and you could have a different background. Just my opinion and experience on the matter.

I think it's really a question of putting the best people they can find in place, regardless of background. Judging from Apple's performance over the past 5 years, I'd say they have done that. I really despise folks that push for diversity for diversity sake. Hire the best you are willing to pay for and don't worry about sex or race.

Agreed. However, it may mean that the process by which folks rise through the ranks is such that it is difficult to break into if you of a certain minority, or gender, or did not attend the right college, etc... And that would not fit with a society that believes in equal opportunity regardless of race, gender or ethnicity- otherwise how would you explain the gap?

This is one of those problems that is fixed not by hiring people into positions because they check off a certain demographic, but by raising interest and entry level opportunities in technology, business management, etc.

Will it take longer? Sure but if you're a shareholder in a company you want the best possible candidate. Doing the above ensures a larger pool to find the best candidates.

Also it couldnt hurt to remove anyone from the company that directly or knowingly indirectly puts in ceilings that only lets certain demos go only so high.

Why does it matter? If the company is succeeding at who is at the helm why change it for no reason? Just because you want to appease minorities or gender lines? I thought the point of this was to make money for shareholders.

In principle you want some diversity in your execs. If everyone has basically the same background, it's easy to get a bunch of yes-men who don't even know what they don't know.

It's not something that the existing execs need to get fired over. So, if no openings appear, then there will be no change. But if openings do appear, it's something to think about.

That makes sense when talking about educational background, but that exists (somewhat, due to the reality of economic disparity) independently of racial background. Their executive board could very well be diverse in the way you're describing. Honestly, I think part of the problem is that we've made the kind of educational background necessary to land big exec positions like this way too inaccessible for minorities. We pay minorities less than we should, which means they can't afford the more prestigious schools without abnormally good school performance - which is not to say that they can't achieve that, because they can. My point is that when the best schools cost exorbitant amounts of money, we need to address the fact that paying minorities less leads to a downward spiral situation where it becomes progressively harder to get higher education as generations pass. I know we have affirmative action in place here to help combat that, but I think the real solution is just to fix the difference in pay.

Here we go again, pushing 1st world problems as if we were some third world country with major gender inequalities. This is almost getting artificially forced that may inhibit major side effects in our nation that is completely unnecessary and uncalled.

I know personally that when I am looking to purchase a product I'll only buy it if the executive board is at least as diverse as the cast of a a late-90's children's cartoon. I mean who cares if the product is fantastic if there isn't a veritable rainbow of people at the top?

Why does it matter? If the company is succeeding at who is at the helm why change it for no reason? Just because you want to appease minorities or gender lines? I thought the point of this was to make money for shareholders.

In principle you want some diversity in your execs. If everyone has basically the same background, it's easy to get a bunch of yes-men who don't even know what they don't know.

It's not something that the existing execs need to get fired over. So, if no openings appear, then there will be no change. But if openings do appear, it's something to think about.

What is actually being desired is cultural diversity, which can influence a person's mentality in many ways and is often useful to view things from many perspectives when problem solving.

A person's cultural background is not determined by their gender or genetic heritage, which makes any references to those as a sign of potential weaknesses or issues for a group as wrong and a sign of lazy and improper thinking.

This is really a chicken and egg problem. Fewer girls go into STEM, those that do are hampered by good ol' boy networks and social expectations (real or otherwise) that they will goof off in their mommy period, which leads to fewer qualified women that might get recruited. Minorities, too, don't go into STEM like they are capable of.

It's good that the investors are pushing Apple to be sure they include multiple viewpoints at the top levels -- but it's not an "Apple" problem or one that can be fixed by arbitrarily appointing a non-white-male to the board.

Noting someones race is not being racist. To quote Ta-Nehisi Coates on his blog today ... "Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another."

Why does it matter? If the company is succeeding at who is at the helm why change it for no reason? Just because you want to appease minorities or gender lines? I thought the point of this was to make money for shareholders.

In principle you want some diversity in your execs. If everyone has basically the same background, it's easy to get a bunch of yes-men who don't even know what they don't know.

It's not something that the existing execs need to get fired over. So, if no openings appear, then there will be no change. But if openings do appear, it's something to think about.

Just because you have a different skin color or set of genitalia, doesn't mean you have a different background or that you won't become a yes-man. Getting diversity for the sake of diversity doesn't help anyone if you(because) let race and genitalia come before skills and merit. Neither does the same color and genitalia imply that you'll become a yes-man, and you could have a different background. Just my opinion and experience on the matter.

Well, I would say that men and women do in fact inherently have a different background. Not differing in all respects, of course, and they won't necessarily differ in their opinions of any particular issue, but even in modern America being male and being female are different experiences. Likewise for whites and minorities.

And if you want your your customer base to include those groups, it could be advantageous to have some representation of those life experiences. You don't necessarily have to represent them at the exec level, but it helps.

The Credit Suisse Research Institute, acknowledging that it’s hard to make sense of the many confusing and contradictory findings, last year offered its own figures. It studied publicly traded companies and found that, over the past six years, the share prices of companies with at least one woman on the board outperformed those with no women on the board. Interestingly, while performance seemed to have little correlation with female board membership when the economy was booming, from 2005 to 2007, this changed with the recession. From 2008 to 2012, the stock prices of companies with at least one female board member were, on average, twenty-six per cent higher than for companies with no female board members. The authors concluded that “more balance on the board brings less volatility and more balance through the cycle.”

This is really a chicken and egg problem. Fewer girls go into STEM, those that do are hampered by good ol' boy networks and social expectations (real or otherwise) that they will goof off in their mommy period, which leads to fewer qualified women that might get recruited. Minorities, too, don't go into STEM like they are capable of.

It's good that the investors are pushing Apple to be sure they include multiple viewpoints at the top levels -- but it's not an "Apple" problem or one that can be fixed by arbitrarily appointing a non-white-male to the board.

A person's gender or race does not constitute a viewpoint. That's the #1 colossal mistake made by pushers of this diversity narrative.

The #2 mistake is that there is a "good old boy" problem in tech these days, or that women are discriminated against in the industry.

We'll never be able to state with any confidence whether or not Apple's board is racist or sexist until Mr. Cyrus Farivar publishes complete details of (or at least, competently produced representative summary statistics and examples of):

Applicants for executive positions, against the openings they were applying for,

The ethnic background of the applicants,

The qualifications of the applicants, and the official reasons for the selection,

Where were the openings advertised? How did Apple make sure the principle of equal opportunities and the overriding priority for competent applicants was reflected in the marketing for these roles?

I get part of my living working for government-supported charities in a country that takes this seriously, where these charities would lose all government financial support if they didn't do this right: it's part of my job to understand how to evaluate equal opportunities statistics. (I would personally suggest that a Sankey diagram would be an excellent way to present equal opportunities summary data: in any fair report on this subject, I would expect to see one of these, a funnel diagram or the equivalent e.g. in representative examples; along with some tables of summary statistics for the racial characteristics etc. of the pool of qualified potential candidates that the applicants are coming from.)

Mr. Farivar's articles are usually very good and I enjoy them very much, but this one leaves a lot to be desired because the method is so hopelessly flawed. (Unfortunately the error here is extremely widespread: we ought to be doing more to correct this common misconception; because these divisive misconceptions and the reactionary policy responses that come out of them do nothing good for race-relations.)

Quote:

Apple is now adding the following language to the charter: “The nominating committee is committed to actively seeking out highly qualified women and individuals from minority groups to include in the pool from which board nominees are chosen.”

This new policy, if true, would be racist and sexist. You cannot actively support minorities for these positions without at the same time depriving members of majority ethnic groups etc., who would otherwise have secured the positions, and who worked hard to be the best qualified for those positions, only to be denied because of discriminatory hiring practices. "Positive discrimination" may right some of the inherited wrongs of yesteryear, but it also creates new wrongs now!

Personally, I don't believe that genuine race-relations can be legislated. It has to come from the heart. We have to genuinely perceive each other as equal human beings. Anything else is a sham.IBM's internal memo said it right in the 1953: any company with discriminatory hiring practices or culture is doing themselves out of opportunities to hire good people! Truly equal-opportunities companies should therefore outperform their counterparts.

(Frankly, I also think it's an insult to women and "ethnic minorities" to select them for a position with an array of policies that will leave them wondering whether their only marginal advantage over the next applicant was their gender or their race!)

The Credit Suisse Research Institute, acknowledging that it’s hard to make sense of the many confusing and contradictory findings, last year offered its own figures. It studied publicly traded companies and found that, over the past six years, the share prices of companies with at least one woman on the board outperformed those with no women on the board. Interestingly, while performance seemed to have little correlation with female board membership when the economy was booming, from 2005 to 2007, this changed with the recession. From 2008 to 2012, the stock prices of companies with at least one female board member were, on average, twenty-six per cent higher than for companies with no female board members. The authors concluded that “more balance on the board brings less volatility and more balance through the cycle.”